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Sunday, June 3, 2012

SK Telecom's foray into education--in English

As one who has been following South Korea's ICT sector over the past decade while working in the field of international education, the recent announcement of a partnership between SK Telecom and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt quickly caught my attention. This alliance involves several of the recurrent themes on this blog -- Korea's need to move from strength in hardware manufacturing and exports into software and content, the role of ICT in transforming education, and the importance of language in shaping how people use the internet and new digital communication networks.
According to a report on Yahoo Finance,"The alliance combines HMH's English-language education content with SKT's T-Smart Learning platform to deliver anytime, anywhere instruction and practice opportunities to students through their mobile devices." The article goes on to note that "The initial offering will make available education content and materials to Korean primary and secondary school students by October 2012. Going forward, HMH and SK Telecom will continue to develop additional offerings that provide device-based educational materials to students in an array of additional markets including China and India."